More Alike than You'd Think
by Ayaia of the Moon
Summary: ONESHOT! Rahne and Logan. Not necessarily intended as a pairing, but upon rereading...it definitely seems to foreshadow some kind of relationship...lots of snow, cigarettes, and broken valuables that Sam will be paying for until the end of time.


It was a compulsion, perhaps. An obsession. This fixation with cigarettes. She didn't even like smoking. Hated it, really. She just loved watching the patterns of the smoke. She would buy a pack and make it last a month, just lighting one every other day, not inhaling the smoke, just watching the patterns curling into the air.

Most people would say it was a waste of money. Most people, though, weren't Rahne Sinclair. She didn't know if it was the smell, or the nicotine getting to her; she knew places that sold incense burners for cheaper than cigarettes; she even knew Amara had herbs and cloves she liked to burn when she 'consulted the Nova Roman spirits.' Whatever those were.

Rahne had never understood communicating with those already departed. She had mistrusted psychics and palm-readers, being able to smell their dishonesty like a perfume, not to mention her religious, albeit abusive upbringing under the thumb of Reverend Craig. He had always confused her. He'd say and do things that he said were God's will, only to turn and go against them.

A form of rebellion, then? The cigarettes? Rahne smiled lightly. She'd stopped trusting Reverent Craig the night he sent a lynch mob after her. After she'd met the splendid Moira MacTaggert. She could hardly imagine a properly executed rebellion against that woman.

"Rahne? Don't tell me you smoke," came a voice from above her. She glanced upward, grinning at Logan. On lazy days like these ones, when Bobby was making ice sculptures in plain view of passersby, not caring because Christmas was on the way; when Rogue was a little more open to people, more accepting of her layered clothes when they had function other than keeping her skin covered, such as keeping her skin _warm_;

When Tabby came over to visit and ended up staying for a month because she didn't want to unearth Lance's jeep from the walkway where it had been made into an ice-sculpture by Bobby – when, basically, Institute life was at its craziest – these were the days she liked to sit on the porch and watch the smoke curl into rings from her cigarettes, counting the minutes it took for poor Sam to find her.

"Knucklehead by the name of Guthrie lookin' for ya short stuff," Logan said gruffly, almost on cue. He looked disapproving. "Should I be concerned? You ain't old enough to buy those yerself."

"Rogue bought them for me," Rahne said, smiling at the disbelief in Logan's eyes. "Ye canna think I smoke them. They're ghastly aren't they? I just like watchin' th' smoke."

"Why not buy incense? It doesn't kill ya, 's far 's I know, anyhow, an' the smoke goes up the same."

"It's not th' same though," Rahne sighed, putting out the cigarette prematurely. "I don't quite know all about it meself, but it's only the cigarettes that have this effect on me."

"Is it your nose? You smell it better with your wolf's nose?" Logan guessed, taking the cigarette from her and examining it.

"Tha' could be it," Rahne said exasperatedly, "But I don't care about the smell. It's th' patterns. Y'see?"

Logan had re-lit the cigarette, only to take a drag from it as Rahne grinned, pointing at the smoke emitting from the end. He then blew the smoke in his mouth into the air above him, so as to not disturb the patterns coming off the cigarette.

With Logan finishing the cigarette, it was burnt out far sooner than it would have been with Rahne just watching it, but both sat in silence, watching the embers struggle through the filter before finally ceasing, as the stub lay on the steps, smoking sporadically until Logan finally squashed the remaining embers with his thumb, as Rahne grimaced – didn't that hurt at all? – he, however, held his thumb out to her, and she watched in surprise as the small burn healed itself before her eyes.

The lag in their conversation, while both watched the smoke, had lasted for at least five minutes, but Logan continued it as though no time had passed.

"It's my nose that gets t' me," he admitted, tapping it and grinning. "I love the smell of nicotine, even secondhand smoke does it for me, since my sense of smell is so good, and I even get the joy of inhaling it without the side-effect of lung disease because of my healing factor."

Rahne grinned, "I know how tha' goes," she said, reaching into her pocket, not for another cigarette, but for a lighter. "The part about th' smell, not th' lung disease," she clarified, waving the lighter in front of Logan, who closed his eyes, sniffing.

"Sage?" he guessed, catching a whiff of a different scent on the lighter than the usual fluid.

"Aye," she said, grinning. "Amara helped me t' put a scent to it, she has a lot of herbs tha' she burns…cloves, an' mint, an' I think she has a little dill…an' she despairs of me habit."

"Ain't that bad, to tell ya the truth. I thought you smoked, and fer a minute I was worried."

"Aww, Logan, ye care!" Rahne said teasingly, putting her lighter back in her pocket and standing up, stretching.

"Yer taller, shortstuff," Logan mused, looking at her oddly.

Rahne grinned again, her eyes lit up as well as her face. "Aye. I'm growin' faster now; ye should see me transform!"

Without waiting for an affirmation from Logan, she simply shifted on the spot, more quickly than Logan had yet seen her transform, and Wolfsbane! The wolf was leaner, longer, and more sinister-looking, not to mention the huge size of her paws. Her growth spurt had affected her mutation marvelously.

Rahne shifted back, still grinning. Logan, however, was distracted by her hair, which had suddenly grown two feet long. She looked at it, her brow furrowing.

"It's been doin' tha,' she muttered, a look of concentration on her face as she willed the hair shorter, but it didn't budge. She huffed, shifting slowly into her wolf form, then slowly back again. She grinned, her hair back at the length she liked it – hanging about 2 inches below her ears. She wordlessly fastened it into its trademark ponytails, starting up the stairs.

"I 'ave t' see abou' Sam, Logan," she said, pausing and looking back at him. If ye…if ye would keep this from the others…"

"My lips are sealed, shortstuff. Don't make Rogue buy you cigarettes anymore, though –"

"But –"

"I'll buy 'em for ya, if ya feel the need, but she could get into more trouble than I can."

"Aye. Thank ye, Logan."

"Beat it, shortstuff."

Rahne hustled up the stairs without another word, almost colliding with Sam who'd finally decided to look outside for her.

"Oh! Rahne! There you are. I've been lookin' everywhere fer you! Jubilation's got a letter from her old gymnastics coach! She's real excited, and she wants to treat us to ice cream!"

"Oh, tha's wonderful, Sam! Jus' let me fetch a few things from my room, an' we'll be off in a wee bit, all right?"

Sam nodded, and Rahne turned back and grinned at Logan one last time. Sam looked at her curiously as she slipped in the door, and followed her.

Logan watched her dash away, as Sam clumsily closed the door behind her. He chuckled and waited for the crash that would soon follow, not disappointed as he heard the vase by the door shatter.

"Sorry! I'll pay fer that!" floated Sam's voice through the wall, and Logan stood, narrowly avoiding being turned into an ice sculpture as Drake rounded the corner.

"Watch what yer freezin,' Icecube," he called casually, meandering towards the back door. Like Rahne, he loved this season. The mansion was never in more chaos, and it didn't seem to affect him like it did Scott and Jean, or Chuck, for that matter. He just let it surround him, but not get to him.

Even with Kurt carrying around his sprig of mistletoe everywhere he went, or DaCosta keeping his room furnace-like, to the displeasure of Jamie, or Drake keeping his room sub-zero to counter it – Sam had taken to sleeping on the couch in the common room – Even when Logan found that he had developed a resistance to Kitty's dairy-free muffins (a few of her friends were vegan), and was thusly the only one she turned to for all of her cooking disasters. When Beast would belt out holiday tunes horribly off-key, and Scott would hole himself in his room reading, not wanting to be a part of the festivities. When Tabby teamed up with Amara and Ray to get back at Drake for crystallizing Lance's jeep. Logan just turned a blind eye, and sometimes a deaf ear to it all and let himself enjoy the chaos.

He supposed it was his gift to the squirts. Let 'em cause as much mayhem as they wanted; it was all in the Holiday spirit.

He heard Sam's approach before he'd gotten there, and Logan calmly opened the back door, just in time for the southerner to come Cannonballing through. There was another _thunk_ as he hit one of the trees on the grounds, and a subsequent whooshing sound as a pile of snow landed on him from the branches of the tree.

"Thanks, Logan," he muttered, standing up and straightening his scarf. Rahne stepped demurely through the door after him, Jubilation not far behind her.

"Tha's what ye get fer showin' off, Sam," Rahne scolded, grinning.

"I wasn't showin' off, I was just makin' sure you weren't gettin' cornered by Kurt's mistletoe, that's all."

"That boy needs a keeper, that's for sure," Jubilation said, grinning.

"Logan, we're goin' fer ice cream," Rahne said then, turning to him. "Do ye want some?"

"Naw. 's too cold fer ice cream, short stuff. Maybe another time."

Jubilation turned to Rahne in surprise. As soon as they got to the road by the gate of the mansion, she hissed indignant objections to her sporadic invitation for Logan to join them. "I mean, he's Logan," Jubilation finished dramatically.

"What were you doin' out here anyhow, Rahne? I mean before," Sam said in confusion.

"I was jus' talkin' with 'im, tha's all. Showin' him my speed in my lyncamprothy. He was sympathizin' with my nose," Rahne said in an aloof air.

"Your nose?" Jubilation interceded, wrinkling her own nose in perplexity.

"It's sumthin' Logan an' I have in common, tha's all." Rahne just grinned mysteriously at her friends. "It's not sumthin' ye'd understan.' Ye have to have been there."

Jubilation and Sam shrugged, and the conversation turned to Jubilation's excitement, and the flavors of ice cream they'd get; Upon getting back to the mansion later that night, Sam and Jubilation looked in mystification of the little box on the table in the common room that simply said Rahne's name on the tag. Without opening it, she knew it was cigarettes, just from the smell. Attached to the top was a small book of matches that seemed to smell like cinnamon.

Jubilation and Sam never did understand why Rahne grinned so big when she turned over the tag. They never did understand why she started to smell like cinnamon whenever she came in from the cold, or why she'd stopped begging Rogue to buy her lighters. They never understood her sudden need to wave to Logan and invite him places, even when he declined every time. They would just wonder at the lighter that gathered dust on Rahne's desk. Had they suspected that it was that note, or even the matches, they may have begun to understand, but more likely than not, it too would remain a mystery.

Meanwhile, Rahne pocketed the note, and later put it gently in her desk. It read thus:

_If you feel the need, strike up a match for company. I'm partial to cinnamon. Otherwise, stick to sage_.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Sorry, no update yet for Unstable Origins, but…well…there was a thing…and then there was a tuba involved…no, I got nothin.' No excuse for me not updating, so I won't try and give you one.

Accept, instead, my sincerest apologies, as well as this little piece about like-noses. Get it? Likeness? Likenose?

Anyway. Please review! If you don't want to…I dunno…you don't have to, I guess, but I really do like to write if I have reviews for motivation…

J

Expect more updates soon

Ayaia


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